System 1 and System 2: is the two-systems account an explanation or a convenient story?

Daniel Kahneman, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The systems are fictions, and I said so. They are a way of speaking that makes a set of real findings easier to hold in mind — not two agents living in the head.¹²³⁴⁵

Sources

1. The prominence of causal intuitions is a recurrent theme in this book because people are prone to apply causal thinking inappropriately, to situations that require statistical reasoning. Statistical thinking derives conclusions about individual cases from properties of categories and ensembles.

   Thinking, Fast and Slow

2. My answer is that the brief active sentence that attributes calculation to System 2 is intended as a description, not an explanation. It is meaningful only because of what you already know about System 2.

   Thinking, Fast and Slow

3. Furthermore, we were not being taught to be generally suspicious of our feelings about patients. We were told that a strong attraction to a patient with a repeated history of failed treatment is a danger sign—like the fins on the parallel lines. It is an illusion—a cognitive illusion—and | (System 2) was taught how to recognize it and advised not to believe it or act on it.

   Thinking, Fast and Slow

4. This matters, because anything that occupies your working memory reduces your ability to think. You should treat "System 1" and "System 2" as nicknames, like Bob and Joe, identifying characters that you will get to know over the course of this book. The fictitious systems make it easier for me to think about judgment and choice, and will make it easier for you to understand what I say.

   Thinking, Fast and Slow

5. Two Systems This book has described the workings of the mind as an uneasy interaction between two fictitious characters: the automatic System 1 and the effortful System 2. You are now quite familiar with the personalities of the two systems and able to anticipate how they might respond in different situations. And of course you also remember that the two systems do not really exist in the brain or anywhere else.

   Thinking, Fast and Slow

Where the argument is made

• Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
• Representativeness Revisited: Attribute Substitution in Intuitive Judgment, with Shane Frederick (2002)
• A Perspective on Judgment and Choice (American Psychologist, 2003)

How the argument was received

Contested as theory even by many who accept the findings; his own framing was more cautious than its popular reception.